From millions to jail, then crowning glory

LOUIS Wolfson, a self-made industrialist and financier whose
legal troubles were central to the resignation of a US Supreme
Court justice, and who later achieved a cliffhanging sweep of the
1978 Triple Crown as a thoroughbred owner, has died of Alzheimer's
disease and colon cancer at his home in Bal Harbour in Florida. He
was 95.

On both counts, Wolfson's mark has proved lasting. The Triple
Crown victory of his colt, Affirmed, has not been matched in the
three decades since, and Justice Abe Fortas, who stepped down in
1969, remains the only member of the US Supreme Court in modern
times to have been forced from the bench amid a public outcry.

Wolfson was born in St Louis, Missouri, one of eight siblings.
After graduating from high school in Jacksonville, Florida, he was
admitted to the University of Georgia to play football.

In his teens he also boxed professionally as Kid Wolf and earned
up to $US100 a fight.

Rising from his Lithuanian immigrant father's scrap-metal lot in
Florida, he started with $US10,000 in borrowed capital, traded big
and then bigger in war surplus materials, and put together a
diverse group of industrial and commercial holdings.

Wolfson was a millionaire at 28, and at one stage as a Wall
Street financier he was estimated to control assets of about $US250
million. He drew wide attention in 1955 with an unsuccessful effort
at a hostile takeover of Montgomery Ward, then the second-largest
mail-order house in the US.

His Universal Marion Company co-financed Mel Brooks' first film,
The Producers, which won an Oscar and became a Broadway
play.

But his career in high finance effectively ended with a tortuous
legal case in the mid-1960s involving his sale of unregistered
stock in a company he controlled. Wending its way to the Supreme
Court, the case made him a pivotal figure in the downfall of
Fortas.

A report in Life magazine disclosed that in 1966, the
year after Fortas had been appointed to the court by President
Lyndon Johnson, Wolfson's foundation had started paying him what
was to be a $US20,000 annual retainer for life, in return for
unspecified consultation. Wolfson was then already under
investigation on suspicion of securities violations, and in
September 1967 he and an associate were convicted of 19 counts of
conspiracy and illegal stock sales.

He was sentenced to one year's jail and fined $US100,000, but
battled his conviction to the Supreme Court, which did not hear the
appeal. Fortas, who had ruled himself out of the case and returned
the retainer, nonetheless resigned from the court in May 1969.

Wolfson spent nine months at a federal minimum-security prison
in Florida. After his release, he took up the cause of prison
reform.

In racing, meanwhile, Wolfson in the 1960s had established
Harbor View Farm, near Ocala in Florida, which he operated for
years as a wellspring of winning thoroughbreds.

Together with his second wife, Patrice, he bred, raised and ran
Affirmed, which captured the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the
Belmont Stakes by a cumulative total of just two lengths over the
equally gifted Alydar.

Affirmed was only the 11th horse since 1919 to win the Triple
Crown, an honour the Wolfsons shared with two other stars of
racing: Laz Barrera, Affirmed's trainer, and Steve Cauthen, the
colt's jockey.

Wolfson's first wife, Florence, died in 1968. In 1972, he
married Patrice, whose father, Hirsch Jacobs, was one of US
racing's most successful trainers.

In addition to his wife, Wolfson is survived by sons Stephen,
Gary and Marty, daughter Marcia, nine grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.